A brief-yet-ongoing journal of all things Carmi. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll reach for your mouse to click back to Google. But you'll be intrigued. And you'll feel compelled to return following your next bowl of oatmeal. With brown sugar. And milk.

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Friday, January 13, 2017

Foggy tower

This is the transmitter behind the TV station. It's the tallest structure in the city, and I often find myself subconsciously looking for it when I'm out on my bike.

In engineering terms, it's a simple antenna. But in the mythology of the broadcast entity at its base - the building, the newsroom, the teams that support it, the people who make this place come alive and connect with viewers for hundreds of square miles around - it's often referred to in reverent tones as "The Big Stick."

Whenever I'm in the parking lot that sits in its shadow, I like to stand and listen to it. You can hear the wind as it makes its way through the guide wires and the open structure, an almost constant song that reminds you of the looming giant overhead. It almost feels alive. Given the amount of energy pulsing through it, it kind of is.

But on this day, when the cloud cover closed in and turned the top half into a foggy abstraction, it seemed strangely silent.